Souvenir coalesces two seemingly disparate stories together—a family member's experience of surviving a tsunami while snorkeling and the longest transoceanic journey of marine organisms. It documents plastic debris that traveled from Tōhoku, Japan across the Pacific Ocean over the span of a decade and washed ashore on the Pacific Northwest coast of North America in 2022, covered with a diverse ecosystem of marine life. Imagined as a cross-disciplinary dialogue between two voices--a family member who recounts memories and myth, and a marine biologist who shares his findings and methods of observational study--Souvenir brings together poetic and scientific reflection on the shifting nature of memory, time, and resilience amidst disaster. By combining narrative, scientific facts, and allusive imagery, it builds an alternative vocabulary to speak to the multi-scalar impacts of personal and ecological loss, and to speculate on strategies of survival across species and coasts.

Support for the project was generously provided by: Air351, Fulcrum Arts, Hellman Foundation, James T. Carlton Marine Science Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), Ocean Space, OCHI Gallery, TBA21-Academy, Williams College.